The point of steganography is to hide useful messages in other messages so that

Question

The point of steganography is to hide useful messages in other messages so that no one suspects the message to contain secrets and tries to crack the message.

The catch is that the recipient should know what that such a message is to be expected and how to decrypt it (find the hidden message).

Steganography helps protect the message while in transit.

In today's social networks and sharing websites like Reddit and Facebook, communication between two people is easily possible with private messages. These private messages are sent encrypted anyway and steganography isn't really the most reliable way to proceed with.

So how can steganography be really useful?

Is there a use-case where one posts a "steganographed" message on Reddit sub-reddit or a Facebook wall?

Explanation / Answer

Steganography is used to hide messages in plain sight. This is useful to do exactly what you say, "so that no one suspects the message to contain secrets and tries to crack the message."

You suggest that private messages could be used, but that violates the use case for Steg: a private message means that it is known that 2 parties communicated and is potentially interesting.

So, then, using your own words, the use case is simple: you can send a communication that is not known to be a message to someone and have that communication channel itself be unknown to 3rd parties.

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